Days 23 and 24

This blogging daily thing is hard, especially when all my pictures are on my home computer and, when I get home, I don't always turn it on.  Sigh.  BUT.  I refuse to think of this as failure!  I absolutely refuse! 

So, for today's (and yesterday's) post, I will give you a brief preview of something I've been thinking about for the last couple of days, and also pictures of the yarn I spun with a drop spindle and a spinning wheel.

Preview:  On Monday, I was talking about my degree (BS in Integrated Studies, emphasizing History and Psychology, 2006) and how hard and fun it was.  The person I was talking to stared at me when I said I'd been studying the history and psychology of clothing and appearance for over 20 years.  That reaction is pretty standard, and it usually has to do with perceptions of my age, so I said "oh, I'm 35--older than I look--and I started reading about all this when I was 12 or 13."  He replied, "it's not the age, it's that I feel sorry for you.  You really spent over 20 years learning all that?  WHY?!"  I laughed it off ("Well, I can extrapolate the history of suspenders, and not many people can say THAT!" I told him...), but he really seemed appalled that someone would spend so much time and energy on something he thought was pointless.  I've been formulating my thoughts about that since then; I hope they've percolated and gelled enough that they make sense when I try to write them down later.

Yarn:

 

Wheel in action!  When I was a little girl, I thought that the yarn somehow went around the wheel.  Turns out the wheel is just a gear to facilitate the spinning of the spindle and the twisting of the yarn.  Cool. 

Isn't it sad how I can't decide if I should caption things at the top or at the bottom?  Maybe I just can't remember from post to post...

 

Lumpy yarn.  Lumpy, lumpy (Rustic!  Homespun!) yarn.  Also, isn't that orange carpet just the best?  This is the upstairs classroom at Heindselman's.  It makes me happy.  Also it makes me want to get rid of the useless old computer parts up there.

This handy thing is called a niddy-noddy.  It's used to wind yarn into a figure-eight kind of configuration after it's spun and plied.  (Look at that yellow chair!  Sort of reminds me of the brown vinyl chairs in my grandparents' kitchen.)

Here you get a better idea of how the niddy-noddy is built.  There's a rhythm to using it that's pretty fun, and it keeps your yarn nice and neat if you don't have a ball-winder or if you're selling it in hanks like this.

This is my finished hank of yarn.  I figure it's not as pretty as someone more experienced would have spun it, but I'm quite proud of it.  Besides, it'll make a great hat or a felted pot-holder that NOTHING would get through.  It's warm and soft and I did the majority of the work myself.  That's nothing to sneeze at!  My instructor told me that someone said "once you've spun your first pound, you'll be an expert".  Well, my first pound hasn't been spun all the way yet, and I'm probably terribly rusty, but the whole experience was so therapeutic that I'm going to save up for my own spinning wheel.  The mental health benefits will more than make up for the cost, I think.  It's a lovely craft and I want to learn and do so much more!